Political changes do not have to end the fight against climate change

The election of Donald Trump in the US this week sent shock waves around the world. A chief concern for many of us is what impact his win will have for global hopes of ever bringing climate change under control. A collection of Trump’s tweets on climate change reveal a stark picture. This article in The Atlantic presents a depressing prediction of what having a climate change denier as the president of one of the biggest, most energy-hungry and most powerful countries could mean for the world.

Perhaps one of the most frightening things of 2016 — and something that got relatively little media coverage given all the other things going on this year — was the news in September that atmospheric carbon dioxide passed the 400 ppm point permanently.

It is tempting to give up.

But it doesn’t have to be the end. Donald Trump is just one man — one very powerful man but still just one man. He may well get strong backing from the Republican party having majorities in the two US houses. He may tear up every bit of climate legislation that Barack Obama brought in over the past eight years. Efforts to combat climate change will definitely be harder if there is not US legislative support.

But …

Donald Trump cannot force people to use more energy. He cannot force people to give up on efforts made already. He cannot make public places turn on their heating in the middle of summer in order to combat over-zealous air conditioning. He cannot insist that all those ridiculous, wasteful things that we see each day keep on happening. He cannot force any of us to give up on our planet.

To date, 105 out of 197 countries and other parties have ratified the Paris Agreement and it came into force last week. This includes 19 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a part of the world that is on the frontline of seeing and fighting climate change effects. It also includes big world players such as China, India and the European Union, as well as the US.

Many times we have seen governments go back on decisions that have proved unpopular or bring in laws in response to public pressure. For example, in 2013, in response to public outcry and campaigning, the UK government abandoned plans to sell off as much as 150,000 hectares of forest and woodland in England. Also in 2013 and also following campaigning, the European Union voted to restrict the use of neonicotinoids pesticides, which had been found to be harmful to bees.

Corporations also respond to people power; the goodwill and custom of current and potential consumers is essential to their survival. Some efforts that traditional energy companies make to show that that they are looking at energy alternatives can be described as “greenwashing” (see, for example, this this stark appraisal of BP’s 2000 rebranding as ‘Beyond Petroleum’). However, there are certainly research efforts going on in the oil and gas industry to improve energy efficiency and diversify energy portfolios and we can challenge them to do more. If nothing else, fossil fuel reserves are finite and it doesn’t make commercial sense to build your whole business on something that will one day run out.

So, what can we all do? Here are a few of the many potential things that everybody in the US and across the world can do, irrespective of who runs our governments:

1. Use less energy ourselves. This can seem like a drop in the ocean. Certainly things like individuals turning off a few lights or walking our children to school are not enough on their own but they are a start and show others that we are serious about the rest of what needs doing.
2. Make good energy choices. Hold our energy providers to account. Ask them what they are really doing to include alternative energy sources in their portfolios. Research them ourselves and hold them to account for their promises.
3. Reflect our personal decisions in our work decisions. Turn off our computers at work as well as at home. Think about the environmental implications of our business travel. Challenge energy-inefficient practices in our workplaces.
4. Call out bad (and good) corporate behaviour. If we see an office block with its lights left on all night, we can email the company and tweet them and ask them to explain themselves. We should also praise those businesses that we see doing well. Good PR is a powerful incentive. We can create the kind of consumer pressure that is impossible to ignore if companies want to run successful businesses.
5. Lobby businesses. There are many highly-effective campaign groups out there organizing responses to bad climate practices. It is very easy to sign a petition or send an email and it can make a huge difference. We can organize campaigns ourselves too, on a local level or an international level.
6. Lobby governments. Even if people like Trump do not agree with the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, they do want to maintain popular support. After all, presumably at some point he will be thinking about the 2020 US presidential election. We can join in action from pressure groups. We can ask more forward-thinking governments to put pressure on their more reticent allies. We can call on international bodies like the United Nations to get involved.
7. Tell others why it matters. We can encourage them to make a difference too.
8. Go beyond my short list here. These are simple people-power steps that can be easily done within the society structures we have today but there are certainly many other things that could be done.
9. Don’t give up.

The battle for our climate may seem bleak this week but let’s make sure we do everything we can to make sure it’s not over. I take reassurance from this video of a heartfelt speech in 1992 of a 12-year old girl to the United Nations. We can watch it and notice all the things that have not improved since that time. However, we can also notice her plea for the ozone layer and remember that, 24 years on, there are signs that the ozone layer is healing. We can also remember that environmental sustainability was part of the Millennium Development Goals and is now a major theme in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Whoever is the leader of the US or of any of our countries, we can all make a difference — and we must.